Geriatrics‐for‐Specialists Initiative: An Eleven‐Specialty Collaboration to Improve Care of Older Adults

Abstract

In the early 1990s, visionary leaders at the American Geriatrics Society and The John A. Hartford Foundation recognized that the marked and growing shortage of geriatrics healthcare professionals would lead to a U.S. healthcare system ill prepared to provide optimal care for the ever-increasing number of older Americans. Led by the late Dennis W. Jahnigen, MD, they set forth a plan to address this shortage by collaborating with surgical and related medical specialists to create a series of programs to foster the highest quality care of older adults. Their unique programmatic vision was that every physician, not just geriatricians, would have basic knowledge and skills in geriatric care, because geriatricians cannot and should not meet the need alone.

Expanding the Field of Surgical Researchers: The Jahnigen Career Development Award

“…One of the primary objectives of the multispecialty collaboration known as the Geriatrics‐for‐Specialists Initiative (GSI) has been to identify and nurture young surgical and related medical specialty so that they could help develop the new specialty‐specific geriatrics knowledge needed to improve care and to support their development into advocates and leaders in their respective specialties. A companion article in this issue of the journal provides an overview of the objectives and strategic initiatives that the GSI has implemented with the goal of achieving the shared vision of improving care of frail older adults by surgical and related medical specialists . A second companion article in this issue describes the Geriatrics Education for Specialty Residents Program (GSR), which was focused on developing faculty and content to educate specialty residents on the care of older adults .…”

Leadership Lessons: Developing Mentoring Infrastructure for GEMSSTAR Scholars

“…This mechanism evolved from two earlier programs, the Dennis W. Jahnigen (American Geriatrics Society [AGS]) and T. Franklin Williams (Association of Specialty Professors) Career Development Scholars Awards (Jahnigen and Williams, respectively). Recognizing that providing infrastructure for innovative and impactful group or peer‐to‐peer mentoring under the tutelage of successful mentors is an essential component of transspecialty research involving aging populations, both the Jahnigen and the Williams programs included scholar networking meetings and events (both stand alone and at the AGS) . Together, the Jahnigen (79) and the Williams (104) programs trained 183 scholars, in 24 specialties, many of whom are now mentoring the next generation of researchers pursuing aging research through the GEMSSTAR and other award mechanisms …”

Models and Studies of Aging: Executive Summary of a Report from the U13 Conference Series

“…This was the second of three conferences, supported by a U13 grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA) that focuses on assisting recipients of Grants for Early Medical/Surgical Specialists Transition to Aging Research (GEMSSTAR) to integrate geriatrics into their subspecialties. The GEMSSTAR program builds on the success of two programs that were funded by the Atlantic Philanthropies and the John A. Hartford Foundation, Inc. (the T. Franklin Williams and Dennis W. Jahnigen Scholars Awards) . The goals for each of the U13 conferences were twofold.…”